Logan and Jean Moments
by inphat28ed
Summary: a collection of scenes from the x2 book b/w Logan and Jean *WARNING: X2 SPOILERS AHEAD*
1. Welcome Home

Page 72 ~Welcome Home~  
  
"Likewise," he replied, but he no longer had eyes for her (Storm). She didn't need to be told who'd followed her down the stairs.  
  
"Hey," he said to Jean.  
  
"Hi," she told him. "Welcome home."  
  
Storm picked up the cue that neither of the others were aware they were broadcasting and flicked her fingers in the general direction of Bobby and Rogue. A puff of breeze whirled across the foyer to give them a gentle push back toward the common room. They took the hint, with all manner of semisecret giggles at how the tables had suddenly been reversed.  
  
"I'll go preflight the Blackbird," Storm said, but she might as well have been speaking to herself.  
  
"Bye, Logan," Rogue called out as Bobby pulled her through the double doorway.  
  
"Later," Logan replied absently.  
  
"Nice to meet you, sir," said Bobby.  
  
"You, too, kid." Then, at last, once they were alone, to Jean: "You look good."  
  
"You, too," she said, descending the last few steps to the foyer. They kept a distance between them because the signals their bodies were giving were pushing hard to bring together. She took refuge in business. "You heard about what's happening in Washington?"  
  
"Haven't stopped except for gas since morning," he answered with a nod. He'd pushed the bike to its limits, on the back roads and interstates, covering better than a thousand miles over the course of the day.  
  
"Storm and I are heading for Boston," she continued. "Cerebro has tagged the mutant who attacked the President. Professor Xavier wants us to try and make contact. We won't be gone long."  
  
"I just got here."  
  
"And you'll be here when we get back - unless you plan on running off again."  
  
"If this hitter's the real deal, you could use some muscle taking him down."  
  
That made her laugh. "We can handle ourselves, thank you very much."  
  
He shrugged posing nonchalance. "Then I guess I can probably think of a few reasons to stick around."  
  
"That's my guy."  
  
"Find what you were looking for, Logan?" called Scott, entering the foyer and catching sight of them both.  
  
Logan didn't spare him a glance. "More or less," he said.  
  
Jen broke their eye contact and strode across the floor to Scott, hating the moment and hating her reactions even more. She didn't like being out of control, of herself, of situations. She was a doctor, with a doctor's abhorrence of surprises and chaos. Logan was the personification of chaos. Sometimes she couldn't stand the little runt, he couldn't hold a candle to Scott in any respect - or so she told herself. Yet she couldn't get him out of her thoughts. And the thoughts she had of him made her nervous.  
  
"I'll see you later," she said to Scott.  
  
"Be safe, okay?"  
  
"Always," she said, and gave him a passionate kiss that was undercut a moment later as she couldn't help looking back at Logan. "You, too," she said, telling herself she was talking to both of them, while both men knew that wasn't quite true. 


	2. Hated Uniform and Flustered

Page 84 ~Hated Uniform & Flustered~  
  
"Where we at?" Jean asked, taking the copilot's seat and locking her four- point harness closed. They'd both changed for the flight, into their X-Men uniforms, snug-fitting suits of what looked and felt like designer leather but which also served as highly effective body armour. For some reason, Storm had chosen to accessorize hers with a cloak that Jean had to concede looked pretty damn good on her and didn't seem to hinder her movements in the slightest. Jean had left her own outfit as it. It made her smile to recall that Logan had hated him on sight, though he didn't look half bad in it, either.  
  
"Checklist," Storm repeated, shaking her head in amusement. In all the years they'd known each other, Jean had never let herself become so flustered. 


	3. Does it show?

Page 86 ~Does it show?~  
  
"Jean," she said, and when her friend didn't reply, she repeated herself, a little more loudly, accompanying her call with a touch of Jean's arm that carried with it just the gentlest shock of lightning.  
  
Jean jolted awake like a student who's been caught napping in class, denial vying visibly on her face with embarrassment for prominence.  
  
"Sorry," she said quickly, "I'm sorry," shaking the cobwebs from her brain and releasing every hold her teke powers had placed on the aircraft.  
  
@~'~,~ @~'~,~ @~'~,~ @~'~,~  
  
"You okay?" Storm asked Jean, who at first didn't seem quite sure how to answer.  
  
"All of a sudden," Jean replied, trying to make what had just happened a joke, "damned if I know."  
  
"Something wrong?"  
  
"It's nothing." Jean shook her head, wriggling in her sheepskin-covered seat to make herself more comfortable, even though both of them knew it was anything but. "I was thinking, y'know, if only we could make the flight go faster. I guess my wish fulfillment kinda got. carried away."  
  
"Ah" was Storm's only comment. It spoke volumes.  
  
"What?" Jean demanded.  
  
"Nothing. I asked, you answered, end of story."  
  
"What, Ororo, for God's sake!"  
  
The other woman shrugged. "Maybe it's just that Logan's back in town."  
  
Jean slumped in her chair, as much as her harness would allow. "Oh, God, it shows."  
  
"Jean," Storm said flatly, "the sun 'shows' every morning when it rises. It has nothing on you."  
  
"Why me?" Jean muttered, covering her eyes with her hands. "Why him? It isn't fair."  
  
"You annoyed or tempted?"  
  
"Truth, both."  
  
"Ouch!"  
  
"Tell me something I don't know."  
  
"He has the look," Storm agreed with a throaty chuckle.  
  
"Then take him off my hands, please, before there's a disaster." To illustrate her point, she waved her hands to encompass the flight deck and remind Storm what had nearly happened mere minutes before.  
  
"Grown woman like you, grown man like him, you saying you can't set a proper example for the children?"  
  
"You're gonna bust my butt forever about this, aren't you?"  
  
Storm turned serious. "I like him, Jean. But what I feel, it's minor league. You two, you're the show."  
  
"It's pure chemistry," Jean told herself as much as Storm. "I've never experienced anything like it. I see him, and the brain disengages completely. It's" - she searched for the right word - "primal. And I can't hide it from him, I can't bluff that nothing's going to happen. And then there's Scott."  
  
Her voice trailed off. Storm reached across the center console and gave her friend's hand a squeeze, but she knew it was scant comfort.  
  
"Have faith, Jean. You'll find a way to work things out."  
  
"I hope so, Ororo. Really I do. For all our sakes." 


	4. Quick Caress

Page 212 ~Quick Caress~  
  
Mercifully, Jean gave him a high sign from the flight deck, and her clambered up the aisle to join her and Storm.  
  
"They'll be all right," she assured him. Unconvinced, he growled, crouching down behind the cockpit seats and occupying himself with an examination of the dials and display screens. Jean was staring at him, first at his reflection on the windscreen, then straight on as she swung around in her chair to look him full in the face. He thought he'd welcome such attention, but her direct gaze made him distinctly uncomfortable.  
  
She must have picked up the cue, from body language of his thoughts, because she reached out and used her thumb to wipe a smudge of blood off his forehead, from where the bullet had struck back in Boston. She didn't move her hand away, though, but stroked him again with her thumb, a quick caress right over the now-healed wound.  
  
More than anything right then, he wanted to take that hand. He wanted to kiss those lips, he wanted to lose himself in the scent of her hair. He wanted -  
  
Too many things.  
  
@~'~,~ @~'~,~ @~'~,~ @~'~,~  
  
Without thinking, responding solely to a surge of emotion that caught them both by surprise, she placed a hand over Logan's. The look he saw when he met her eyes was a revelation that he knew would break both their hearts. And yet, it was a moment and a memory he'd carry with him to the grave.  
  
@~'~,~ @~'~,~ @~'~,~ @~'~,~  
  
Around them, the hull righted itself, returning to level flight.  
  
Logan looked questioningly at Jean, wondering if this was her doing. As mystified as he, she shook her head, but she also didn't move her hand. Indeed, she tightened her grip, interlacing her fingers with his. 


	5. Barely Breathing

Page 244 ~Barely Breathing~  
  
Watching her leave, Logan decided he was done with Magneto's Q&A. Brusquely excusing himself, he strode after her through the campsite to find her standing underneath the wing of the Blackbird, with her head and shoulders hidden inside on open belly hatch. She was muttering to herself, in a tone and using words he didn't expect from her. It made his suspect she'd been handing around him too much; Xavier and Scott would accuse him of being a bad influence. Outstanding!  
  
"How bad is it?" he asked her.  
  
"I'm running fluid through the hydraulics. If the test passes, it'll still take four to five hours to get off the ground. Like it or not, we're stuck here for the night. Fortunately," she continued in a rush, "our stealth netting should hide the Blackbird pretty well from any casual reconnaissance. As for the rest, the passive scanning array says we've got clean sky to the horizon, and according to the infodump on the main computer, there shouldn't be and surveillance satellites overhead, either. That means minimal risk of detection."  
  
"That isn't what I meant."  
  
"I know what you meant, Logan. This is how I choose to answer. Okay?"  
  
He said nothing. He had a hankering for a beer, but he knew there was none aboard the Blackbird, and Magneto struck him as more of a wine guy. A case of five-star premier cru, not a problem; God forbid the man even consider a can of Molson's.  
  
From Mystique he expected nothing less than poison. It didn't matter to her that his healing factor made him immune. Quite the contrary. It struck him that the fun for her would be seeing how much it would hurt him to recover and how long it would take.  
  
After a while, conceding to herself that Logan wasn't going to go away, Jean allowed herself a sigh.  
  
"I'm worried," she confessed. "About the professor. About.Scott."  
  
"I know," he said.  
  
He stepped under the shadow of the aircraft and reached out his arm to her. In flats, she was his height, but her uniform heels gave her an edge. It amused him to have to look a little bit up to her. At his touch, she folded against him to rest her head on his shoulder, allowing him to take the full weight of her body, which he did without any effort. There was no separation between them, physical or emotional, and his nostrils flared as he realized the implications.  
  
"I'm worried about you," he told her softly. "That was some display of power up there."  
  
She snorted dismissively. "It obviously wasn't enough."  
  
He turned his head to look her in the eyes. She kept hers downcast, using her lids to shroud them, to keep him at a distance. But he didn't need eyes to see what was so obvious, or to sense the depth of the attraction between them. He'd known it from the start, that first moment when he's awakened in the mansion infirmary to find himself staring up at a face that would haunt him forever.  
  
He was barely breathing; he didn't want to do anything to break the moment. She felt the faint touch of air across her face, and he mouth opened in response, as if it were life itself to her, her head tilting just so against him to give him freer access.  
  
The kiss was there for the taking.  
  
Any other time, he wouldn't have hesitated. Any other time, he wouldn't have cared about the consequences. Now, consequences were everything.  
  
"I love him," Jean said, mostly to herself, because she still wouldn't look at Logan. He knew she believed that with all her heart, so why didn't she sound so convinced?  
  
"Do you?"  
  
She looked confused, as if she didn't understand the question. For those few seconds it took no answer, he saw her throw off replies the way a pitcher would reject signs he didn't like from the catcher. The one she settles on satisfied nobody, least of all her.  
  
Now she looked at him. "People flirt with the bad guy, Logan. But they don't take him home." She pulled her hands away. "They marry the good guy."  
  
"Is that enough?" he asked quietly. And then, in response to her silence: "I could be the good guy, Jean."  
  
"Logan, the good guy sticks around."  
  
He threw caution to the winds.  
  
He laid a palm lightly against the slim column of her throat, fingertips tucked behind the knob of her jaw while his thumb caressed her chin. Her skin was the softest, smoothest surface he could remember touching, and the contact between them was electric. He felt a flush of heat against his hand, saw color rise beneath her skin to give it a roseate glow that was a pale echo of the fire of her hair. Her breathing quickened in concert with her pulse, her heart pounding so strongly he could feel it against his own chest, even through the armoured fabric of her uniform.  
  
She trembled as if her body were being swept by a succession of microquakes. And he held back a smile at realization that her skin was puckering all over with goose bumps.  
  
They were balancing on edges of passion and emotion that out the keenness of his adamantium claws to shame. And yet, because both of them recognized the seriousness of the moment, they both felt perfectly in control. They were poised on the crest of the perfect wave - for him, one of snow, part of an avalanche; for her, one of surf. No effort at all would be required to bring it to an end, to call this quits before they went too far. She didn't need to say a word, to make a gesture; he'd take his cue from the primal signals that weren't under her volitive control.  
  
She caught him by surprise, covering his hand with hers, reaching out at the same time with her telekinetic powers to close the miniscule gap that remained between them.  
  
Now it was his breath that was caught up by a sudden gasp, his own heart that skipped a beat amid its own increasing trip-hammer riff, as her lips brushed his.  
  
That first contact was fleeting, tantalizing with possibilities, but he didn't give her a chance to pull away as her opened to her, meeting her mental strength with that of his body. He heard a small noise that mingled desire and satisfaction, but couldn't tell whether it came from him or her as they pulled each other closer, and he come to understand the incredible strength that lay hidden within this lean, whipcord figure.  
  
He lifted her off her feet, shifting his own stance just enough so that he supported her against the whole hard length of him, and now there was no question. He was the one who moaned as barriers collapsed between them and Jean gave him access to her own mind, her own sensations, her own emotions.  
  
The world blurred around them, took on a new shape as their desires caught up with both of them, laying them bare to their souls. As their thoughts merged, it struck him that he should be afraid. There were memories here that he fought to keep hidden from Xavier, two volumes to the book of him life. The first, which he believed had been stolen from him, which Magneto now suggested was intimately involved with William Stryker, and which Xavier apparently had known about from the start. But the second, everything that had happened to him since, had more than a few moments that weren't pretty.  
  
Yet he didn't even try to hide any of them; she was too important. He wanted her to see the whole of him; he wanted to give her every excuse to run away, because if she chose to stay, if she accepted what he was, then this was real. It would last.  
  
What surprised him was the discovery that she was just as scared, just as determined.  
  
~Scene of Jean as a young girl playing with her friend, Annie Malcolm. The ball they are playing with escaped across the street and Annie runs to get it. She gets hit by a car and Jean holds the bloody, mangled body of her friend in her arms as she lies dying. It was that Jean found she could enter another's mind and hear the thoughts of others~  
  
"It's okay, darlin'," Logan said softly, brushing tears from her cheek. "There's no need to cry. You're okay."  
  
She shuddered again, as though the surface trembles had given way to a deep and lasting tectonic shift, from the kind of quakes that level buildings to the ones that reshape the face of continents and raise mountains to the heavens.  
  
She kissed him on the lips, on the cheeks, and he stifled a smile at the realization that he was crying, too.  
  
She took a deep, calming breath but said not a word. Logan followed her lead. There was nothing that needed saying between them, not now, perhaps never again. It would be easy if her heart told her one thing and her head another; scientist though she was, empiricist to the core, she knew she'd follow her heart.  
  
But her heart felt equally, passionately torn between them, and she couldn't see any way yet to heal the rift.  
  
It made her head hurt and her soul ache, and she knew she wasn't likely to feel better any time soon. Logan wanted to kiss her again, so much and so hard it was an ache within him. He wanted her more than his life, more then his past.  
  
But she shook her head and pulled away.  
  
"Logan, please - don't."  
  
Against every instinct and every desire, he nodded assent and did nothing but watch as she strode away. That wasn't like him at all. His solution to every problem was direct and invariably physical. No hesitation, less regrets.  
  
Until now. Until her. Somehow she brought out the best in him. Even more, she fanned in him a desire to be better, to transcend the person and life he was accustomed to. That would be a lot easier if he knew that at the end he'd have a shot, a chance to gain her as the prize. What made him smile at the wicked joke fate was playing was the realization that winning her wasn't guaranteed. It might not even be possible, no matter how he proved himself. Whatever they felt for each other, her love for Scott was just as strong and could not be denied.  
  
Knowing that, why make the effort?  
  
Knowing that, he found himself wanting to try anyway. Because, even though it made him crazy, he liked the way it made him feel.  
  
~Nightcrawler and Mystique talk just off to the side, watching the scene between Logan and Jean unfold. Mystique gets an idea~  
  
Logan should have been sleeping, but he didn't even try. From the moment he crawled into his tent, he'd been fingering and staring at his dog tags, as though physical contact - or glaring at them - might inspire some miraculous revelation. Charley had told him to be patient about his past, that his mind demanded the same opportunity and time to heal as his body would. Clear implication: This was a journey they would take together. Now Magneto comes along to imply that Charley knows more - a lot more - than he's let on. Truth? Or was the bad guy just screwing with Logan's head?  
  
The faint smell of Folavril - her perfume - announced her presence a moment before Jean opened the tent flap and crouched inside. Suddenly, his heart rate kicked into high gear, and he could see from the pulse on her throat, the faint flush to her skin, that the attraction was as undeniable mutual.  
  
He started to speak, without the slightest idea of what he wanted to say, but she stopped him with a finger against his lips. Her eyes were laughing with anticipation and delight as she crawled closer across his sleeping bag. His own eyes couldn't help but follow the line of her shirt, more open than she usually wore it, to the shadows between her breasts. She straddled him and settles her weight on his hips. The touch of her was electric, the scent intoxicating, as she slid her hands across his chest, up the thick column of his throat to take hold of him along the line of his jaw and bring his lips to her.  
  
There was no hesitation this time. The kiss was dynamite, fulfilling all the promise of the first, and he returned better than he got, moving his left hand up to cup her neck and his right beneath her shirt to caress her across the ribs and belly. She trembled against him, catching her breath with the sparkling overload of physical sensation.  
  
That's when he popped his claws. The outsiders from his left hand, to bracket her throat right beneath her chin, forcing her to hold her head erect and at attention, or risk slicing skin - and likely bone - on the razor-keen adamantium blades. The middle claw was the kicker, the incentive to behave: One false move, she'd be done.  
  
At the same time, he tore open her shirt to reveal three scars right below her left breast, the indelible legacy of his claws stabbing through her rib cage to her heart.  
  
"Busted," Mystique said, sounding not at all dismayed. 


	6. Masquerade

Page 260 ~Masquerade~  
  
Logan supervised the breakdown of the campsite, mainly to keep tabs on Magneto and Mystique. Magneto boarded the plane as if he owned it, but Mystique paused just a moment in passing and flashed Logan a secret little smile to remind him of what had happened during the night. As Logan closed the hatch, she made sure he caught her flashing the same smile at Jean, most likely to make him wonder if she'd pulled the same trick with her. And, of course, to imply that Jean had fallen for the masquerade. 


End file.
